


an unexpected gift

by aes3plex



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Domestic Bliss?, M/M, domestic something anyway.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21905128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aes3plex/pseuds/aes3plex
Summary: The house in Banbridge is neither large nor small, but even from a distance it has the appearance somehow of a box stuffed beyond closing.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 22
Kudos: 113
Collections: 12 Days of Carnivale ~ 2018





	an unexpected gift

**Author's Note:**

> This was written & posted on Tumblr for 12 Days of Carnivale 2018.

The house in Banbridge is neither large nor small, but even from a distance it has the appearance somehow of a box stuffed beyond closing. 

“There are thirteen of us, you recall,” Francis says, peering out the carriage window at the facade through the sloping rain.

“Hardly an impossible number,” James says. Sits up: straightens his waistcoat. Coach to sloop to coach he has coaxed Francis along, carefully not thinking of what they might make of him, the residents of this house of whom he cannot conceive except as an assortment of Francises of various ages, sexes and professions. Best foot forward, he thinks to himself; he has seen combat and he will survive this.

“Well,” says Francis. “Consider, please, when the moment comes, that we have come at your request.”

=

After they are swept into the hall which smells of cut greenery and burnt pastry, after Francis is embraced by at least two women in tears and one who calls him “an absolute _weasel,”_ after James has managed to have his case sent _somewhere_ , although he is not sure he will see it again—after all this, Francis looks at him flatly and says, “twelve days,” in tone of longing which James is now perhaps more capable of understanding.

=

Francis, it transpires, is one of the youngest of the infamous thirteen. There are generations to follow: the hallways are full of lawyers and clergymen and girls and spinsters, officers in the Hussars and little children in blue silk sashes, all apparently talking at once. There are so many of them that even James’s considerable powers of keeping his connections straight are tested and then abandoned. He would be more concerned by this but that he is variously introduced by people other than Francis as a rear-admiral, a lieutenant, a captain in the Marines, and once, somewhat improbably, an adjutant to the Swedish ambassador (“That’s Thomas,” Francis says, curling his lip, “being _funny._ ”). Certainly at least one of the children has been telling the others that he is a pirate.

Principally, when he is introduced correctly, it is as Francis’s friend, and this seems to be a credential which stands him a great deal of confidence. 

“Francis,” booms an elderly man with the thunder of heaven in his voice, “are you still a godforsaken atheist?"—"Francis is an irredeemable radical,” he is told, by a cheerful, pretty woman who may be Francis’s sister-in-law or his sister but is called Mary Ann either way. “Frank doesn’t like mint sauce,” a dragoon informs him at dinner. (“I _do_ ,” says Francis, with indignation. “You go off something for a fortnight when you’re ten and you’re never forgiven it.”)

=

It is more like a ship than a house, James thinks. Houses, in James’s experience, are quieter. Here it is up and down stairs, looking for playing cards, a bottle of brandy, looking for this gift or that—gossip from the kitchen, what someone has heard from her lady’s maid—one of the stablehands heartbroken, his girl run off with a soldier—a spat over chess among the sisters. George and Graham still not speaking. James is brought into these intrigues without scrutiny or examination; his presence seems taken for granted. 

At one point when he has at last found an empty room to stand in for a moment—a dusty study which is nevertheless stuffed to every rafter with books of all possible descriptions, German novels, Latin poetry, mathematical treatises, staunch loyalist sermons, political pamphlets (heavily annotated in disapproving red ink, the word “nonsense” repeating throughout and a familiar “FALSE”), a wild-eyed woman—a niece? Elizabeth?—comes through from some connecting passage carrying a child covered in jam and a dressed capon on a platter. She thrusts the platter into James’s open hands—he thanks heaven for his gunner’s speed—and says “James, please,” on her way past. He has no idea what he is meant to do with it until she turns at the door, the child’s hands now in her hair, and says “James, George’s son, I mean, not James, Edward’s brother—in the back parlour, I think,” and vanishes down the passage.

“You’re a part of it now,” Francis says, gleefully, leaning on the bannister halfway up the stairs, when James walks past with the capon. “And you asked if you should wear full dress.” 

=

He aims himself upstairs to change his coat before dinner, and someone’s daughters offer to show him the way: he isn’t sure whether to be offended or encouraged that no one seems concerned by this unchaperoned encounter. They are entirely uninterested in him, as it comes to pass: whether he is too old now to turn their heads, or whether being a particular friend of their dour Uncle Francis has simply marked him as inexpressibly dull, he cannot say, but he feels no resentment. Still they are charming and full of chatter, and once he has his coat he waits for them to finish:

“Have you any family, Captain,” says Eleanor, as she pins ribbons to her hair. 

“A brother,” James says. “I suppose.”

“You _suppose,_ ” says Emily, from the settee, where she flips through fashion plates. “How exciting.”

“Well, hard luck,” says Eleanor. “You’ve got us now, and we’re not exciting in the slightest.”

=

The house is neither fine nor shabby. Every inch of it is worn and every inch polished; there are cracks in the plaster and new carpets in the dining room. William, James thinks, would have a fit at the decor, but James rather likes it. 

Over the fire in the front parlour hangs a small portrait of a straightforward-looking woman, her hair pulled back from her soft face. “My mother, Jane,” Francis says, leaning on the sideboard, the silver tray with its decanters at his elbow, untouched.

James steps up to the fire, eyes turned to the painting.

“She looks like you,” he says, after a moment: it isn’t clear at first but he sees it after a moment, in the shape of the eyes and the mouth.

“Don’t speak ill of the dead, now,” Francis says, amusement wrapped like wire around the ragged edge of his voice. 

James turns—steps to him—takes his hand and presses it. It is too intimate for a gesture of friendship, here in this dark overfilled room, but then there is no one to see it. 

=

“James,” Francis says, “is not to be trusted with a pudding.”

This over a dinner from which such an item has vanished. He begins the story somewhat apologetically, awaiting some sound of disapproval from Francis: but Francis only looks at him, raises an eyebrow, nods _go on._

In five minutes he has them rapt, leaning elbows on napkins and chins on fists, whispering _no_ and _he wouldn’t_ and occasionally saying “ha!” By the time he has reached the climax—himself and Charlewood in the cupboard, Mrs Helfer half-convinced poor Mr Rassam is mad—there are tears on cheeks, and Mary Ann is has placed her forehead on the table and is shaking in silent hilarity. Even Francis, leaning back in his chair, is smiling at him, more at ease than should be possible.

“But why were you on the Euphrates at all, Captain,” asks Graham, after all is said, and now at last Francis says “oh, here we are,” but he is still smiling too—

“Well, a man has to keep some secrets,” James says, and smiles back. Realizes, after he does, that he has not kept his mouth shut to hide his false teeth: finds he doesn’t mind. If anyone has noticed, it doesn’t show.

=

“You have returned him to us,” says Charlotte the younger, who very much likes novels, nearly tearful. “For that we owe you more than we can possibly repay.”

“Don’t mind Lottie,” says Francis-who-is-fifteen. “She takes after the weeping side of the family.”

=

Francis had insisted that they take rooms in an inn, but in the run of time an elderly aunt arrives from Bath and the girls are desperate to be away from her (“I _loathe_ whist,” Emily says, with feeling) so there is a general switching-round, and they end up in an awkward space under the eaves dominated utterly by its only bed.

Charlotte the elder—Francis’s sister Charlotte, who seems to feel responsible for such things—wrings her hands. “Oh, Captain,” she says, “I _am_ sorry, only there’s nowhere else and every room in town is full—you aren’t put out, are you? Francis will not be too much trouble, I’m sure—”

“Like a dog,” Francis says, amused. No one seems to have considered whether he might object to the arrangement.

“They’ve both slept in fourteen inches of hammock, and worse,” says Sarah, who is nailing something festive—a hook for a holly bough?—to the wall. “I’m sure they will endure this.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Charlotte says, to herself, turning, “ _oh—”_

They do indeed endure.

=

On Christmas eve the whole house decants into a variety of conveyances to go up to a party—apparently an immemorial tradition—at the old hall which James suspects is the Earl of Moira’s former seat, not that he can find anyone to ask in the flurry of greatcoats and pelisses.

“Will you go,” Francis says to James, in the parlour where he sits at piquet with his sister Sarah, who is smoking a pipe. “There will be dancing,” he says, to James, considering his cards. “I’m sure the girls would be delighted to have you.”

“Oh,” says Sarah to Francis, “Does he dance? Wasted on you, then.”

Perhaps James ought to startle at the implication, but he finds he simply hasn’t the energy. 

“Correct,” Francis says, just as James says “Not at all,” and they look at each other and smile.

“Against character,” says James, “I rather feel that dancing is beyond me, tonight.”

He takes a seat by the table, flipping out his tails, and eyes Francis’s hand. Lifts an eyebrow. 

“Ha,” says Sarah.

=

Upstairs in the warm room above the empty house Francis turns the bolt of the door and draws the curtain and says “there, now,” and turns to James with the edge of smile.

“Less glamorous than you’d hoped, I imagine,” he says, as he sits on the end of the bed to pull his boots off. The room smells of cloves and oranges, though not one pomander is to be seen: below, the faint scent of hot brick and dust. On the bed Francis looking up at him, assessing, eyes slightly narrowed: works his jaw as if he means to say something.

Three steps to stand between his knees and bend to kiss him on the mouth and chase the taste of sugar, smoke and almond. To sling a leg over his thigh, slide into his lap—a little stiffly, perhaps, though James does not choose to dwell on it—and sit like that, over him, like a girl in a tavern, and smile against his mouth. Francis’s little exhalation against his lip. 

“Is this all right,” James says, thinking: in the family home, under his mother’s roof, rest her no doubt pious soul.

Francis huffs, tips himself backwards, and hauls James down on top.

=

In the study packed with books he finds against all odds a copy of _A Poetical History of England_ : means only to glance at it but finds himself caught in the rhythm, in Louisa’s odd sense of humour. Is still standing there forty minutes later when Francis’s silent sister Rachel slips through on her way somewhere. Pauses: looks at him curiously.

“Do you know it,” she says, in her almost inaudible voice.

“My mother,” he says. Her eyebrows quirk—her face so much like Francis's—

“Your mother—enjoys it?” she asks, stepping cautiously closer. He clears his throat.

“Louisa Coningham,” he says, “was my—stepmother.” A lie: he hadn’t meant to lie here. “Well,” he says, “nearly.”

If this perplexes her she doesn’t show it. “How wonderful,” she says, still quiet as a mouse, “to have such people in one’s family.” 

=

Sarah is watching him carefully, and James has the distinct feeling that he is being assessed. “May I tell you something, Captain Fitzjames,” she says. When he inclines his head she continues: “When Francis was a boy he kissed a brewer’s son behind the stables,” she says. “I’m not sure it ever occurred to him that he oughtn’t. They sent him to sea a month later.”

She says this very plainly, as if it is of no concern to her. Perhaps, he thinks, it isn’t. 

“He has been back once or twice,” Sarah says. “Since father passed.” A twist of her mouth. She stands: she is a tall woman, grey-haired; her shoulders very straight. “Thank you,” she says, looking James in the eye, “For bringing him home.”

=


End file.
